Category: Baseball Hall of Fame

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Prediction: 10 Veterans Committee picks

Months ago, I wrote about “The 10 best baseball players not in the Hall of Fame.” It remains one of my most-read entries and even got mentioned in a Mormon blog, since it included Dale Murphy. Were I really slick, I’d post the Top 10 Mormons not in the Hall of Fame. That’s a project for another time, though.

Today’s list features players I expect to be Veteran’s Committee picks sometime soon. Rather than simply reposting my old list, though, I will offer a couple of clarifications. First off, this list will not include Pete Rose, Joe Jackson and Hal Chase. Deserving though they may be as players, they remain long shots because of their involvement with gambling. If anything ever does happen, it will come from the commissioner of baseball, not the Veteran’s Committee.

The Veteran’s Committee is baseball’s fiefdom for those players not quite good enough to make the Hall of Fame fresh off their careers but able to gather sentimental appeal over time. While the Writer’s Association recognizes the Hank Aarons and Babe Ruths of baseball, the committee is for the Phil Rizzutos of the sport. There are probably dozens of these kinds of players who will one day be in the Hall of Fame. Here are ten worth considering:

1. Dom DiMaggio: At some point, committee members will awaken to the injustice surrounding DiMaggio, one of the game’s great gloves and not a bad bat either. It’s a shame it didn’t happen within his lifetime.

2. Johnny Pesky: This might seem a stretch, as Pesky had 1,455 career hits and just seven full seasons. However, if DiMaggio makes it to Cooperstown, Pesky might too. Here’s why. Pesky lost three prime seasons to World War II. In the season before and two seasons following his military service, Pesky averaged .330 and led the American League in hits each year. Barring WWII, Pesky would have had over 2,000 career hits which is usually enough to get the Veteran’s Committee talking.

Pesky would benefit from DiMaggio’s induction for a subtle reason, though. In 2003, David Halberstam came out with a well-received book, The Teammates, which described the friendship of Boston Red Sox teammates DiMaggio, Pesky, Bobby Doerr and Ted Williams. Doerr and Williams are already enshrined. If DiMaggio gets in, it would make sense to let Pesky in too.

3. Gil Hodges: Having just finished The Boys of Summer, I am putting Hodges on this list over Murphy. Murphy had slightly more career hits and home runs, but Hodges gets the nod for also being a World Series winning manager with the New York Mets. He gets a sentimental boost too because of his death from a heart attack, two days shy of his 48th birthday.

4. Urban Shocker: After my original post about the 10 best players not in the Hall of Fame, a reader suggested Urban Shocker. I agree. Not a regular starting pitcher until he was 28, he won 187 games, nearly all of them in a nine-season stretch.

5. Carl Mays: A fellow pitcher from Shocker’s era, Mays notoriously killed a batter with a pitched ball in 1920. He also had 207 career wins, a 2.92 earned run average and won at least 20 games five times.

6. Bobby Grich: A power-hitting second baseman, like Doerr, the two had similar career numbers.

7. Dave Parker: I wrote in May that Parker was a Veteran’s Committee pick waiting to happen, since he had better career number than Cooperstown members Jim Rice and Orlando Cepeda. I maintain my position.

8. Ron Santo: Another player the Veteran’s Committee seemingly exists for.

9-10. Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker: The Detroit Tigers double play combination were repeat All Stars, each getting over 2,000 career hits. Neither merited induction by the Writer’s Association, but they’re the sort of candidates the Veteran’s Committee loves: Earnest, consistent and baseball men all the way. If Rizzuto can make it into Cooperstown, Trammell and Whitaker should as well.

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The fab four?

Yesterday brought the news that four former managers are on the Veteran’s Committee ballot for the Hall of Fame.  They are: Gene Mauch, Danny Murtaugh, Whitey Herzog and Billy Martin.  They all managed in the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s and each had good, though not spectacular careers.  If I had to offer a baseball metaphor, which I am apt to do, each was like the Joe Carter or Jack Morris of his time: Good, probably even All-Star quality,  but not Ken Griffey Jr. in his prime and certainly not a Hall of Famer.

Looking over the list of 24 managers in Cooperstown, it is comprised of names like Connie Mack, John McGraw and Casey Stengel — in short, legends.  Currently, there are four enshrined managers who did their best work in the era of Mauch, Murtaugh, Herzog and Martin: Walt Alston, Sparky Anderson, Earl Weaver, and Dick Williams.   The first three seem like logical choices, near institutions as managers in their respective cities, each winners of multiple World Series.  On the other hand, Williams strikes me as someone who just happened onto a great situation with the powerhouse Oakland Athletics of the early 1970s.  He’s probably still more qualified than any of the four new candidates to be in the Hall.

The feeling here is that Herzog will probably be enshrined.  He made a couple of World Series as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals back in the ’80s.  Moreover, the Veteran’s Committee is made up of former players and tends to be soft on likable, establishment-friendly candidates.  Late, great Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray probably put it best, in a 1978 column: “To get into the Baseball Writers’ wing of the Hall of Fame, you better be Babe Ruth.  Or better.  To get in the veterans’ wing, all you have to be is a crony.” And Herzog is a baseball man if there ever was one.  He even titled his autobiography You’re Missing a Great Game (I’m titling mine Ask Me a World Series Winner From Any Year. I say this all the time to people that I meet, even at job interviews.)

Now granted, if there were a Hall of Fame for legendary characters of the sport, Martin would be a first ballot inductee.  But the Hall is about results, first and foremost, and Martin managed too many different teams and was always good, but never great.  Like Williams, he did his best work for another hugely talented team — the New York Yankees of the late ’70s — that probably could have been managed by just about anyone.  And Martin had too abrasive of a personality to make an attractive Veteran’s Committee pick.  Something doesn’t feel quite right here.

It will be interesting to see who makes the Hall of Fame out of the current crop of managers.  My money is on Joe Torre, Tony LaRussa, and Bobby Cox.  Lou Piniella  could be a Veteran’s Committee pick, as could the retired Tom Kelly, though even that seems a slight stretch.  On the other hand, there are a number of Mauchs and Murtaughs managing today.  They are the Bruce  Bochys, Dusty Bakers and Bud Blacks of the sport.  Competent? Likable? Long-tenured?  Yes.  Future Hall of Famers?  Probably not.  They could probably feature prominently in some kind of B-Level Hall of Fame but that’s fodder for another post entirely.

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The 10 best baseball players not in the Hall of Fame

1. Pete Rose: No surprise here. The all-time hits leader is easily the most-talented (and charismatic) player who doesn’t have a plaque hanging in Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York. Rose was banned from baseball in 1989 for sports betting, a shame, considering racists like Ty Cobb and Cap Anson are in Cooperstown.

2. Joe Jackson: Babe Ruth is said to have modeled his swing off “Shoeless Joe,” who owns the third best batting average all-time, .356. Alas, the Chicago White Sox great was also banned for gambling, in the wake of the infamous 1919 World Series that he helped fix.

UPDATE December 11, 2011: THE 50 BEST BASEBALL PLAYERS NOT IN THE HALL OF FAME, VERSION 2.0, VERSION 1.0

3. Dom DiMaggio: Ted Williams had a pamphlet in his museum about why DiMaggio should be in the Hall of Fame. The Boston Red Sox centerfielder was a seven-time All Star, renowned for his defense. The knock was that he had a relatively short career. Then again, so did Sandy Koufax.

4. Dave Parker: This guy’s a Veteran’s Committee pick waiting to happen. If Jim Rice and Orlando Cepeda can get into the Hall, Parker should too. He had better career numbers than those players for hits, doubles, runs batted in, runs scored, and stolen bases. However, just like Cepeda delayed his Cooperstown bid by going to prison for drug trafficking, Parker likely hurt his chances with well-publicized cocaine abuse.

5. Bert Blyleven: The poor man’s Nolan Ryan, Blyleven had 3701 strikeouts and 287 wins over the course of his career. Much like Ryan, though, Blyleven also lost a lot of games, 250 overall to Ryan’s 292. Still, he probably has the best credentials of any pitcher not in Cooperstown.

6. Hal Chase: Yet another great player banned for gambling, Chase made a name for himself with outstanding defense at first base in the early part of the 20th century. However, he was so shameless in his association with gamblers, Ken Burns’ Baseball noted, that fans took to chanting, “What’s the odds, Hal?” when he played.

7. Stan Hack: A solid Chicago Cubs third baseman from the 1930s and ’40s, this Sacramento native had 2193 lifetime hits and a .301 lifetime average.

8. Ron Santo: Much like Hack, Santo was a good Cubs third baseman who may get into the Hall before too long through the Veteran’s Committee.

9. Dale Murphy: If character counts, Murphy should have been a first-ballot inductee. The Atlanta Braves outfielder and devout Mormon deserves a spot on the All-Time Nice Guy squad, being a throw-back player who never drank and instead did things like answer children’s questions in a regular newspaper column. He also hit 398 home runs and won back-to-back Most Valuable Player awards.

10. Dwight Gooden: Were it not for cocaine addiction derailing his career, this New York Mets phenom would have been on the inside track to Cooperstown. As it stands, his 194 victories are better than Hall of Fame hurlers Dizzy Dean and Koufax and all three pitchers had primes that lasted for similar, brief lengths.

UPDATE December 11, 2011: THE 50 BEST BASEBALL PLAYERS NOT IN THE HALL OF FAME, VERSION 2.0, VERSION 1.0

Also check out the Tuesday feature, Does he belong in the Hall of Fame?